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Welcome to this week's edition of The Legal Wire!

Courts are sounding the alarm: Australia’s chief justice says judges are now “human filters” for AI-generated filings, an unsustainable load as bogus citations keep slipping through. In the market, Blackstone just put $50M more into Norm Ai and its newly launched AI-native firm, Norm Law LLP, separate on paper, but built to automate regulatory reviews for heavyweight clients. Contract tech keeps consolidating too: Icertis snapped up Dioptra to push toward autonomous contracting. And firms are retraining fast, Ropes & Gray wants first-years spending ~20% of billable time learning AI.

This week’s feature digs into why many lawyers still avoid Microsoft Copilot for real legal work, and where legal-specific tools like Gavel Exec step in. Plus: meet HAQQ, pitching a “legal twin” that learns your practice instead of forcing new habits.

This week’s Highlights:

• Industry News and Updates

• Building with HAQQ: The Legal AI Twin That Thinks Like Your Team

• AI Regulation Updates

• AI Tools to Supercharge your productivity

• Legal prompt of the week

• Latest AI Incidents & Legal Tech Map

➡️ Australia’s Chief Justice Warns Courts Are Becoming ‘Human Filters’ for AI-Generated Arguments | Australia’s chief justice, Stephen Gageler, says judges are increasingly forced to act as “human filters” for AI-generated legal submissions, calling current levels of machine-produced content in litigation “unsustainable.” While acknowledging AI’s potential benefits, he warned that its rapid development is outpacing the legal system’s ability to assess risks, citing recent cases involving false AI-generated citations.
^{Nov 21, 2025, Source: The Guardian}

➡️ Blackstone Invests $50M in Norm Ai as Startup Launches AI-Native Law Firm | Blackstone has poured another $50 million into Norm Ai, the legal-tech startup now launching Norm Law LLP, an independent law firm built around AI-native legal services. The firm will use Norm Ai’s agents to automate regulatory reviews for Blackstone and other financial clients, while remaining separately owned to comply with legal ethics rules. Norm Ai has now raised more than $140 million since 2023.
^{Nov 20, 2025, Source: Reuters}

➡️ Icertis Acquires Dioptra to Expand Its AI-First Contracting Platform | Icertis has acquired Dioptra to strengthen its AI-driven contract intelligence platform, adding advanced redlining and automated playbook creation to speed negotiations and improve accuracy. The deal supports Icertis’ long-term AI strategy and pushes the company closer to delivering fully autonomous contracting for legal teams.
^{Nov 19, 2025, Source: BusinessWire}

➡️ Ropes & Gray Asks Juniors to Spend 20% of Billable Time on AI Training | Ropes & Gray is encouraging first-year associates to allocate about 20% of their billable hours to AI training, including mastering internal tools and experimenting with new capabilities. The programme, now rolling out across all offices, reflects a broader push among firms like Kennedys to prepare juniors for a future where AI reshapes traditional entry-level legal work.
^{Nov 17, 2025, Source: Law Gazette}

Legal Technology

Building with HAQQ: The Legal AI Twin That Thinks Like Your Team

When Antoine R. Kanaan started receiving hundreds of calls from people around the world asking for help with legal services, he wasn’t a lawyer. But he was listening. What he heard, loud and clear, was a collective frustration with a legal system still operating on faxes, PDFs, and email chains.

From that friction came HAQQ. Pronounced like the Arabic word for “right” or “justice,” HAQQ set out to do more than add AI to a time-tracking tool. It aims to rewire the way legal teams think, work, and grow. The result is a practice management platform built from the ground up to be secure, compliant, and intuitive enough to feel like a digital legal twin.

HAQQ presents itself as buidling a new kind of infrastructure. A system that’s flexible, an agentic system that learns from your practice, adapts to your habits, and helps you draft faster, bill smarter, and scale more confidently.

Click here to continue reading the full interview

The AI Regulation Tracker offers a clickable global map that gives you instant snapshots of how each country is handling AI laws, along with the most recent policy developments.

The most recent developments from the past week:

📋 24 November 2025 | Independent Senator bill introduced to combat deepfakes: ACT Independent Senator David Pocock has introduced a new private Senator’s bill titled "The Online Safety and Other Legislation Amendment (My Face, My Rights) Bill 2025" which aims to prohibit the use of digitally altered or artificially generated audio or visual content that depicts a person’s face or voice without their consent by amending the Online Safety Act 2021 and the Privacy Act 1988. The Bill will: (1) establish a complaints system for the non-consensual sharing of deepfake material; (2) strengthen the eSafety Commissioner’s powers to respond to AI-generated harm including the power to issue removal notices and formal warnings; (3) provide clear civil redress through the courts for individuals wrongfully depicted or exploited via deepfake material, including civil penalties for various contraventions including posting deepfake material without consent or failing to comply with a notice requiring removal of deepfake material; (4) define the concepts of deepfake material, non-consensual sharing, and subject of deepfake material; and (5) align domestic law with Australia’s international human rights obligations, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

📋 20 November 2025 | Trump appears to ready executive order on state AI law preemption: It is reported that President Donald Trump is considering an executive order aimed at preempting state-level AI regulations. The draft order proposes establishing a litigation task force to challenge state AI laws, restricting federal funding to states with AI statutes deemed "onerous," and directing federal agencies like the Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Communications Commission to develop federal standards that would override state regulations. The order specifically targets laws in California and Colorado, reflecting the administration's intent to centralize AI governance and prevent a patchwork of state regulations.

📋 19 November 2025 | EU releases digital omnibus to AI, cybersecurity and data rules: The European Commission has unveiled its new digital package which includes a digital omnibus that streamlines rules on AI, cybersecurity and data, complemented by a Data Union Strategy to unlock high-quality data for AI and European Business Wallets that will offer companies a single digital identity to simplify paperwork and make it much easier to do business across EU Member States. On the EU AI Act, the digital omnibus proposes: (1) Timeline changes (Article 113) — delaying the applicable date for high-risk AI system obligations (currently 2 August 2026) to either 6-12 months after technical standards are approved, or specific dates in December 2027 and August 2028 depending on the Annex listing; (2) Downgrading AI Literacy obligations (Article 4) — shifting from a legal requirement for providers and deployers to implement AI literacy to a requirement for the Commission and Member States to foster it and encourage providers/deployers to take measures; (3) EU AI Office scope expansion (Article 75) — designating the AI Office as the authority responsible for supervision and enforcement of certain AI systems based on general-purpose AI models where the model and system are developed by the same provider; (4) Limiting registration in public EU database (Article 6) — removing the obligation for providers to register an AI system in the public database if it's used in a high-risk domain (Annex III) but determined and documented by the provider as not high-risk due to the nature of use, though evidence of this assessment must still be provided upon request; and (5) Proportionality for small mid-caps (SMCs) (Article 99) — introducing smaller and more proportionate compliance penalties for SMCs (companies with up to 750 employees and under €150 million annual turnover), which complements the existing proportionality for SMEs and startups. The proposal is subject to trilogue negotiations over the coming months.

Why Lawyers Aren’t Using Microsoft Copilot for Legal Work, and Why They Turn to Legal AI Like Gavel Exec

Writing motions and agreements was my day-to-day, long before I ever touched AI. As a near decade-long practicing lawyer at Sidley, I spent years on cases where precedent was the whole job, whether I was pulling prior examples from iManage or printing and highlighting paper copies of Westlaw cases (dating myself!) That’s why, now that I run Gavel, a software platform trusted by thousands of legal professionals across the globe, I pay close attention to both vertical and horizontal tech tools used by lawyers.

And after testing Microsoft Copilot myself, talking with dozens of lawyers across practice areas, and watching the online debates play out, one thing is clear to me: even as Copilot rolls out broadly through Microsoft 365, lawyers still aren’t using it for the real legal work.

But why? Copilot is a great general assistant. It writes emails, summarizes content, and makes all of Microsoft Office more useful. But the work lawyers do, like contract drafting, redlining, analysis, and negotiation, is a different challenge entirely. The expectations are higher, the context is critical, and the application layer (what it actually does beyond giving you text back) is more important.

Click here to continue reading the full article

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🆕 Draft Pilot - Redline contracts accurately in minutes. The easiest-to-use AI redline solution, plug-and-play right in Microsoft Word

🆕 Legalito - Beautifully smart software that makes the lives of lawyers easier.

Want more Legal AI Tools? Check out our
Top AI Tools for Legal Professionals

The Inaugural Future Lawyer Canada is SOLD OUT 

The buzz around the Canadian legal industry is at an all-time high! We can officially confirm that the Future Lawyer Canada 2025 event is completely SOLD OUT, underscoring the pressing interest in innovation among legal professionals and technology vendors.

This year's conference will focus on the legal enterprise's transformation from Experiment to Engine for R&D, with discussions covering compliance, AI and ethics, and rethinking strategy. 

The agenda will also address talent, highlighting the role of The New Legal CIO and driving in-house innovation for cyber talent.

Missed out on this year’s strategic event?

To ensure your firm or tech company secures its place in these critical discussions, get in touch today for 2026 Cosmonauts events and attendance opportunities!

Visit the link to secure future access: 🔗 https://www.futurelawyercanada.com/

Why it helps: Turns scattered updates into a crisp, leadership-ready snapshot, perfect for partner/client briefings and stand-ups, without building a whole deck.

Instructions:
Provide: matter name, objective, current status, top risks, budget/spend to date, next 3 milestones with dates, and decisions needed. Ask for a single-slide summary that includes:

- Title and matter ID

- 4–6 bullets on progress

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- Risk table (Risk | Impact | Mitigation | Owner)

- Upcoming deadlines (dates)

- “Decisions needed this week” (bullets)

The Responsible AI Collaborative is a not‑for‑profit organization working to present real‑world AI harms through its Artificial Intelligence Incident Database.

View the latest reported incidents below:

⚠️ 2025-11-17 | Incident 1275: Purportedly AI-Enhanced Phishing Campaign Allegedly Impersonates Australian Government Services in Large-Scale Welfare Scam | View Incident

⚠️ 2025-10-05 | Incident 1272: Purportedly AI-Generated Home Intruder Videos Allegedly Prompt Dozens of Dutch Police Call-Outs | View Incident

⚠️ 2025-10-15 | Incident 1270: Multiple Purported AI-Assisted Cheating Incidents Reported Across South Korea's SKY Universities During October 2025 Midterms | View Incident

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